Concerned for the long-term diretion of healers

[Gravagar]

It's been about year since Shadowbringers, and it'll be about a year until the next expansion. In terms of the direction of healers, this means waiting an entire year for any chance at a major rework. Looking back on the past year on these forums, there's no shortage of healer salt. If it was something we were just going to "get used to," I feel like we would've gotten used to it already. There is so much press coverage about how great SB2 is and what fun it is, but meanwhile, over here, I'm trying to persuade myself that Scholar might still have some appeal after the core job mechanics that I enjoyed were gutted with no replacement.



There's been no information related to healer changes in 5.3 that gives me anything to look forward to. "Various Job Adjustments" could mean zero changes, could be an in-depth revamp. What will healers play like a month from now? I don't know, because I still don't understand the changes that happened last year. In SB1, WHM was the only 'pure healer', so why were the others homogenized to fit this particular mold? Why should healer players be happy for that change? Why should we be looking forward to healing in 6.0 if our jobs this deep into 5.x are still "WHM, Great Value WHM, and Great Value WHM In A Dress?"


I just want this entire role to improve... On any given day, ~1/4 of the playerbase should be playing it to keep Duty Finder running smoothly, right? But from the beginning of 5.x and to this day, on my server, DF has had Healer in-need with alarming frequency. I just want to know what the plan is to get us back to 'normal' in that regard... If there even is one. Anybody else starting to feel like we're getting the cold shoulder here?

[BarretOblivion]

Copy and paste this post with Tanks as well. Both of the non DPS roles got gutted and are salt ridden with all the changes they made (or lack of changes) in Shadowbringers with 0 good information on future changes to the roles (if any are planned).

[Recon1o6]

felt like we've had the cold shoulder for a while. The entire shb healer changes felt like they were designed by the person who did the whm in sb which was one of, if not the most unpopular iteration of a job after SB monk and 5.0 Sch launch
I mean look how popular these 2 threads are, if healers were even remotely close to what they are wanted or used to be, then threads like these wouldn't be a thing
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...e-quit-healing
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-healer-issues

I agree with barret, the tank changes have been abyssmal as well. 3 simple marauder clones albeit 1 of them op in soloing old duties, and gunbreaker

A lot of people swear the devs hate healers and tanks. at the very least they don't have a clue or are designing things from the dps players perspective instead the actual people playing the damn jobs


problem is, the devs are burying their heads in the sand. They said they're not gonna put potencies or job changes in the patch notes in the future. I can't recall what it was specifically though, but it goes to show they refuse to listen when one of the key problems is the devs not listening and communicating

[Veis_Alveare]

The dev's seem to think if support roles aren't homogenized then they cant be balanced.

What they don't seem to realize is we will always identify a meta comp for any given raid tier or duty, whether the gap in rDPS is as broad as we saw back during SB between SCH and WHM or as narrow as the margins are now.

They may as well at least make the healers distinct again at this point. Sure, maybe we'll wind up with another SCH-is-literally-god situation and it will be present in like 70% of clears but like... at least everyone could be enjoying themselves again?

[Gravagar]

...
I agree with barret, the tank changes have been abyssmal as well. 3 simple marauder clones albeit 1 of them op in soloing old duties, and gunbreaker
...

Good point from both of you about tanks. We all know about Yoshida's love for Black Mage. I'm frustratingly envious of how smooth and polished many of the SB2 deeps job reworks are, especially contrasted against all the new gripes we didn't have last expansion. One thing that frustrates me uniquely about healers, compared to tanks, is that tanks diverged from the MT/OT dichotomy, but healers still have the regen/shield one. I thought choosing to redesign healers was going to solve the fact that there's two healer types to make room for an "any two healers are fine" meta, but we've only doubled down and reinforced this dichotomy as the only way. Would people even care about having a 4th healer if it's just another homogenized White Mage Clone...?

The dev's seem to think if support roles aren't homogenized then they cant be balanced.
...

I'm still annoyed at FINALLY getting an ability that lets me auto-crit an adlo, at the same time as having my powerful Deployment Tactics shield nerfed into the ground (both from the doubling not deploying, and from shield heals in general being nerfed heavily.) I'd rather have my stronger, deployable shields back, but have to spam adlos to try to get them easily. Is it a bit OP? Sure. But why not give one to Noct AST too? Each tank has their own invuln-type cooldown, each shield healer should have a megabarrier cooldown too. That's the kind of homogenization we actually want, and it's mind-boggling that, instead, we got these underhanded, almost malicious aggressive nerfs that have been framed as buffs (we buffed your hp! but also all the enemies, because we didn't want to put 'cut healing potency in half across the board' in the patch notes, that would counteract how much we invested into the SB2 advertising budget / good press coverage. also Adlo, also 5.0 Launch AST, etc etc)

[Semirhage]

Sure Scholar was unbelievably overpowered, but instead of the hamstringing we gave everyone this expansion we should have gone whole-hog in the opposite direction: the devs should have made it even more overpowered! That's how we could have fixed the role. By buffing the two healers that needed it least. WHM may have been boring, but at that's where it beloooooooongs.

https://gfycat.com/ecstaticsandydodobird

[Saefinn]

I didn't like that SCH was OP, as a SCH. But IMO it wasn't the DPS stuff that made it OP, it was the fact SCH had no weaknesses and was very well rounded. It used to be that SCH struggled to get people's health up, but they had other tools at their disposal to make up for that, it just meant it was harder to play SCH versus WHM, then they 'fixed' that and those who played SCH more efficiently unsurprisingly were OP.

But for the increased DPS as a result, I agree, I can't see why the other jobs couldn't have been brought up. WHM has received many nerfs to holy, were all of them necessary if SCH was ahead with DPS? And it wouldn't take much to boost an AST's rDPS.

However, the severe lack of communication. I can understand the decision in-so-far in that sometimes people overreact to changes they put out and kick off about it without trying it and find that actually the changes were fine. Especially if the changes are finalised and not going to change in time for the patch, so maybe there is mentality that there is nothing gained by telling people earlier anyway besides grief.

But on the flip side, sometimes that feedback can be genuinely good feedback. And they don't even need to communicate the specifics, but overall feedback. But I feel case in point the feedback from the media tour on healers was spot on, because we are still complaining about the same things. Because many of us experienced healers can tell how certain changes will affect how the jobs play. I remember my argument being that unless the gameplay has been adjusted to be more heal heavy, then we're going to find it boring and there was not indicator anything about any such change. I think the changes would have been fine if this game had much more of a heal focus, because IMO, I like the actual 'heal' design, but in 95% of cases it is more than we need. It's why I play Noct Sect AST, because it has MP management issues and is less effective and has more to do in its downtime, this is how I make healing more enjoyable for me.

And I think even if they don't see a reason to announce things like potency changes they should still communicate with the community, this is one of the things I've generally praised about the developers of this game and is why I am baffled we've got very, very little. There's only 1 of 3 things they need to say at least break the limbo:

• We have seen your feedback, we understand your complaints, we are going to make changes to address these, we thank you for your patience as it will take time before we can offer any meaningful changes.
• We have seen your feedback, we understand there are those unhappy with the changes. Please bear with us whilst we look at reviewing these changes.
• We have seen your feedback, we have seen a mix of good and bad feedback on the healers, but we feel these are working as intended and will not be making any big changes or reverting anything.

[Crushnight]

And I think even if they don't see a reason to announce things like potency changes they should still communicate with the community, this is one of the things I've generally praised about the developers of this game and is why I am baffled we've got very, very little. There's only 1 of 3 things they need to say at least break the limbo:

• We have seen your feedback, we understand your complaints, we are going to make changes to address these, we thank you for your patience as it will take time before we can offer any meaningful changes.
• We have seen your feedback, we understand there are those unhappy with the changes. Please bear with us whilst we look at reviewing these changes.
• We have seen your feedback, we have seen a mix of good and bad feedback on the healers, but we feel these are working as intended and will not be making any big changes or reverting anything.

Yoshi P has recently said that they have received loads of requests to change/fix Brd but there seems to be no clear direction the community wants it to go, well people then started giving general ideas on how to do it because, Brds now know their feedback is being looked at.

Well what about healers, mnk, tanks all of which have way more complaints and issues than Brd does, still radio silence, we have zero idea if anything is getting to the devs and that needs to change, we need acknowledgement at this stage, failing to do it is just going to make 6.0 job changes reveal worse.

[Deceptus]

problem is, the devs are burying their heads in the sand. They said they're not gonna put potencies or job changes in the patch notes in the future. I can't recall what it was specifically though, but it goes to show they refuse to listen when one of the key problems is the devs not listening and communicating

This. I'm getting tired of analyzing the patch notes only to have been proven right of just how bad some of SE's decisions are and clearly they are too.

Hint: Stop making terrible decisions.

You know how you make better decisions? Have a GD test server. GET OUT OF YOUR GROUP THINK MINDSET SE.

I didn't like that SCH was OP, as a SCH. But IMO it wasn't the DPS stuff that made it OP, it was the fact SCH had no weaknesses and was very well rounded. It used to be that SCH struggled to get people's health up, but they had other tools at their disposal to make up for that, it just meant it was harder to play SCH versus WHM, then they 'fixed' that and those who played SCH more efficiently unsurprisingly were OP.

In other words that is also known as a "well designed kit / ability suite" and should have been the goal to get the other healers to.

[Gravagar]

I didn't like that SCH was OP, as a SCH. But IMO it wasn't the DPS stuff that made it OP, it was the fact SCH had no weaknesses and was very well rounded. It used to be that SCH struggled to get people's health up, but they had other tools at their disposal to make up for that, it just meant it was harder to play SCH versus WHM, then they 'fixed' that and those who played SCH more efficiently unsurprisingly were OP.

...

Interesting to me that you're enjoying Noct AST because of its flaws, rather than despite them. I'm playing Diurnal AST as a "flawed shield healer", simply because I believe I can make do with having free shields every 30s / 120s, with regens to do work in-between cooldowns. The job I want to play is a shield healer that is highly effective and also FEELS effective, like SCH used to... But, as someone whose view of healing is "warped" by playing Scholar since it was first introduced, it doesn't feel like that job exists in SB2. So I'm also trying to make do with the broken pieces of what's left over...

Yoshi P has recently said that they have received loads of requests to change/fix Brd but there seems to be no clear direction the community wants it to go, well people then started giving general ideas on how to do it because, Brds now know their feedback is being looked at.

Well what about healers, mnk, tanks all of which have way more complaints and issues than Brd does, still radio silence, we have zero idea if anything is getting to the devs and that needs to change, we need acknowledgement at this stage, failing to do it is just going to make 6.0 job changes reveal worse.

All the bards in the entire game could decide to go on strike for a day and nobody would notice. If all the healers in the game went on strike, or all the tanks, everyone else would IMMEDIATELY notice. 1/2 of the entire population needs to be playing healers and tanks, or the game just stops working. I'm also worried that 6.0 will feature another massacre that causes experienced players to flock to deeps jobs in droves due to the blatant night-and-day difference in quality between deeps reworks (save MNK and BRD), and I'm frustrated that I have to schedule my hype/despair for a year or more in the future... rather than have expectations that last year's mistakes will be addressed this year.